The Guitar Refinishing and Restoration ForumThis discussion forum is hosted by The Guitar ReRanch and was created to serve those interested in the arcane art/science of guitar refinishing and restoration. Those with all levels of experience are welcomed to participate.

Just finishing up my first complete side-project bass at work. It's all been a great learning experience. The neck was actually a CNC spec neck from a company that we were thinking of using, but never did, so they gave it to me.

I actually have learned to fret, but this one was already fretted and I did all the levelling, cornering, crowning, etc. I also sprayed it with a tinted nitro clear from cardinal in our spray booth.

The body was one that I bought off of talkbass a while ago and used for a short time. I stripped it of whatever rattle can paint was on it (didn't look half bad), redid a lot of the curves and cuts to even them out. I also hollowed it out as much as possible for weight relief under the pickguard. Then, I used a can of reranch black that we had at the shop in our spray booth and then coated it with a lot of nitro clear. Learned a ton about spraying in the process.

I have most of it put together right now, but I need to cut a nut for it next week. I have cut one nut before-- and not so well-- but have been shown how to do it the right way in the shop. I'm helping a guy there with his effects builds and he's going to help me with the finer points of nut cutting.

After that, it shouldn't be long. I really only have lunch time to work on it (gotta pick up the kids in the afternoon, so I can't stay late), but I'm hoping to get it done in the next week.

Here it is all laid out with the pickups just placed in to fit:

Here it is in the spray booth and you can see the weight relief cuts:

Lastly, here's another body that I've been working on. It was an alder P-bass that someone made for me. I played it for a while and liked it, but as I had access to tools, i wanted to do something special with it. I planed off the top, did the same kind of weight relief, added a blem cocobolo top that ended up not looking bad at all, and reshaped and sanded it. The neck pocket needs some work but it's getting there as well.

I'm going to use a maple neck for it from USACG, but that's not it... just put it there to check out what it would look like.